Mercury News writer Mike Antonucci has published a few excerpts from his interviews with Nintendo and Sony execs. He will be posting the rest later tonight. See below for the comments transcribed thus far.
- Reggie Fils-Aime (Nintendo)
- Fils-Aime predicted that Nintendo's upcoming console, the wii, will succeed in the game machine market "substantially beyond what we achieved with GameCube."
- He said his principle reaction to Sony's $500 and $600 pricing for it's upcoming PlayStation 3 console is that "they are creating a product that's not for the mass market."
- He was restrained when asked about Sony's addition of motion sensitivity to its PS3 controller, which comes well after Nintendo's high-profile development of a Wii controller based on that technology. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," he said. But he noted that Sony's action reflected the intense competition within the game industry and said that had been a factor in Nintendo's decision to keep other news about the wii under wraps until much later in the year.
- Phil Harrison (Sony)
- Harrison said he understands why people would think Sony was piggy-backing on Nintendo's controller ideas. But he said the only real motivation is that the motion-sensor capability has become easier to incorporate and is "an innovation which is a natural extension of a game controller."
- He said the need to take vibration-feedback technology out of the PS3 controller (because of the motion sensitivity) was not influenced by Sony's legal trouble from a patent infringement suit by Immersion Corp. over the PlayStation brand's current force-feedback feature.
- In a discussion about the upcoming plans for Sony's PlayStaytion Portable device, Harrison said the PSP is currently profitable on both the hardware and software sides.